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Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

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Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#761

Post by time_to_smile »

thehappypm wrote: post #541
ctvo wrote: post #390

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along…

I see Boston as the tech hub of the East more than NYC. New York obviously has a large number of tech jobs, but Boston and DC both have a higher concentration of tech; in NYC the big fish is obviously finance. I discount DC a little because a lot of that is government and defense related (not a bad thing, just not my cup of tea). Boston has a lot of diversity in tech, lots of health/pharma like Moderna, web companies…

I don't know how anyone who has spent considerable time around SV/SF, NYC and Boston could see Boston anywhere close to the others.

The Boston tech scene and culture (outside of physically being on the MIT campus) is awful. TripAdvisor and Wayfair, your examples, are two companies I would aggressively advise any friends from even talking to. While all the major players are there now it took them a long time to get there. Comp in Boston still lags NY and SF considerably, and in general Boston has always had a resistance to anything "new", it's politically liberal but otherwise a very conservative city. The biotech companies there have always been way more heavy on the bio than the tech. I've worked for Boston area tech companies multiple times , before and after the tech boom, and would never work for a Boston area tech company again.

NYC is on a whole other level. Not only do you have all the major players with much larger campuses there are far more startups and early IPO companies. There is the also entire world of HFT companies (Boston's finance scene is largely very old school investment management companies) which alone would be worthy of making NYC a techhub. I also disagree with your claims about the concentrate of tech companies. Tech related meetups and events in NYC are much larger, more active and have more exciting participants than in the Boston area.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#762

Post by LooseMarmoset »

wnolens wrote: post #468
ctvo wrote: post #390

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along…

I feel you here. I'm a relatively new NYC resident and worried that I'll be "ruined" forever. I've otherwise lived in Toronto and Seattle. It really comes down to fear of change I think. Humans are very adaptable, and the same one can thrive in car-centric suburbs as they would in shoulder-to-shoulder metropolises. Given no constraints, you prefer city. But throw in kids (requirement for more space/better schools), o…

I have lived in San Diego. I have spent time in Los Angeles. I have spent time in San Francisco. I am not a stranger to large cities.

I can say with certainty I will never live in one of these places. I won't even live in Pittsburgh, which is an order of magnitude smaller than any of these places. There's no escaping people. There's no escaping politics or bureaucracy. There's no way to escape petty crime, crazy people, and noise. You can't see the sky at night, there's never any "dark".

Everything is orders of magnitude more expensive in a city. $5000/month rent? And people think this is "reasonable"? I don't even pay a third of that on a mortgage on a 2400sq/ft house. With a nice yard, decent neighbors, a good school, low crime, low taxes, the works. Our night-time intruders are turkey, deer, the occasional black bear, raccoons, skunks, and screech owls.

Do I have to drive to get anywhere? Yes.

Do I get the highest-paying jobs? Do I have immediate access to cute little bodegas and trendy little shops and night life? No.

But I can let my kids go outside and play at night. I can leave my doors unlocked. Nobody breaks into my car and steals my stereo. I can leave my house with my garage door up and all my stuff inside, and my neighbors will call/text me to remind me.

Is this an adequate trade-off? For me, absolutely yes.

I get why people like living in big cities. I will never again live in one myself, though.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#763

Post by 11101010001100 »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #752
Ekaros wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can get all that online. So it might make sense to move these communities to somewhere very very cheap. Or even distribute them around.

My wife and I watched Chris Rock from the front row at the Comedy Cellar last summer. Total cost was like $75 with drinks. Absolutely incredible. I could watch every incredible stand up special available online and it wouldnt be anywhere close to that in person experience.

The big guys tour. It's the little guys that are interesting....

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#764

Post by xwowsersx »

ctvo wrote: post #390

The problem for me, as a long time NYC resident, is that there's no other place in America I want to live even with work from home as a possibility. I like mass transit. I like not owning a car. I like that the city is generally safer than the rest of America. I like that it's the center for tech on the east coast, the arts for the entire country, and finance for most of the world. I like that we generally get along…

There are many, many places to live with crime rates far lower than NYC so I'm not sure I really understand this. Maybe you mean compared with most places you could see yourself living?

For example, I live in a nice town in CT and the crime rate is 3.99 per 1000 vs NYC which is currently about 13.3 per 1000, making NYC (as a whole — I understand your point about neighborhoods within the city) 3x higher in crime.

I understand the other things you appreciate about the city. It's great to able to walk outside and have amazing restaurants and other amenities a few feet away; there's a reason many people like the city.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#765

Post by jimmaswell »

feet wrote: post #208
namelessoracle wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because low income anywhere (rental area or even just low income suburban areas) typically has a population that is less able to invest into their area (in time or money), and historically has shown that they seek an extractive relationship with their environment rather than invest in it.

Are you joking? Poor people are the exploitative ones? That's just entirely false The entire basis of capitalism in the US is that the work of the poor is exploited by those with the capital to build factories and businesses which extract labor and resources from the poor people That's why they can't invest. You have it entirely backwards

Exactly. Most of a poor person's income will be spent locally every paycheck. Higher income, more is saved or sent offshore etc

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#766

Post by AlwaysRock »

ubermonkey wrote: post #126

I keep hearing the notion that we should prohibit corporations from owning residential property, and I kind of like the idea.

This is a great idea that would never be allowed to made into legislation because of corporate lobbyist.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#767

Post by dml2135 »

bombcar wrote: post #417
afavour wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhhh. I don't disagree for a second that, say, Starbucks could take a hit, reduce profits and still be able to operate successfully in New York. But I'd argue a lot of what makes New York the city it is is things like small independent restaurants that already operate on very thin margins. They also have no fat cat executives pocketing the spoils. So, perhaps, yes, the city could survive without increasing wages but…

I’m surprised that Walmart et al haven’t started pushing for higher wages to kill competition- they must not care much about the smaller competitors. McDonalds and Starbucks eat a wage increase in stride, small restaurants and businesses just go under.

It's because any potential of increased profit from less competition would still be less that the amount of profit they make by fleecing their workers.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#768

Post by noobermin »

throwaway_4ever wrote: post #616
noobermin wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In defense of sg, the only reason you said this is you never left orchard rd. You can experience worlds of culture just eating food at any given neighborhood coffee shop or going to a wet market in the morning. It just is a different culture, one that doesn't try to emulate America too much (hipster shit like live music or public art or things like that).

> hipster shit like live music or public art Yes, those things are definitely recent "hip" phenomena, not found over the entire millennia of history

There is a certain kind of live music and public art that (honestly) tourists are looking for which the person I was referring to didn't see. There is "music" and "performance" that fit into the guise of culture but it isn't really for tourist consumption.

That said, there is live music and public art too, just since it isn't Singapore's culture but an import from the west, there's less of it (see my rant on western food).

EDIT removed "white" qualifier for tourist, my brain still thinks in US but really all tourists from wherever go to the malls and idk promenade but miss the kopitiams and markets because it's just not in the touristy areas.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#769

Post by colinmhayes »

pjmorris wrote: post #673
huevosabio wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Housing =/= Land. But our policies which heavily kneecap our ability to build more [0] make it such that Housing starts behaving like Land. The solution is to build more, and the success of Vienna does not come from public intervention but from the added supply. Tokyo is another city with famously cheap housing, and the secret is that they make it easy to build. I personally think that achieving affordable housing pr…

> The solution is to build more, and the success of Vienna does not come from public intervention but from the added supply. Population densities (per sq k): Manhattan: 38000 Tokyo: 6158 Vienna: ~5000 I don't see how supply is Manhattan's problem here.

The problem is that Manhattan is the only truly dense area with good transit in a country of 330 million. Tokyo is much larger than Manhattan and is dense throughout. Other Japanese cities are dense too, so people have options when prices out.

Re: Manhattan rents cross $5k threshold for first time

#770

Post by rayiner »

shostack wrote: post #708
rayiner wrote: post #362

I wonder how much of contemporary Democratic politics is driven by insane rents in NYC and SF. The party has seen an influx of core Reagan voters—everyone from Wall Street bankers to Silicon Valley engineers (Reagan won Santa Clara County by 17 points in 1984). These affluent, highly educated folks have adopted the narratives and politics of the working class, juxtaposed against a ever-more-narrowly-defined “elite.”…

This comment nicely attempts to paint high earning (not necessarily wealthy) upper middle class professionals as the scapegoat for an issue they did not create. The reality is, the people who are actually wealthy (think deca millionaires on up through billionaires) and investment firms and corporations are the ones suppressing supply for individual home owners. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/23/us/corporate-real-est…

My comment isn’t blaming anyone. I didn’t say these folks are the cause of housing prices going up. I’m just trying to understand the psychology of how they’re reacting to that phenomenon.

My suspicion, though, is that ballooning upper middle class salaries, combined with tax rates on the upper middle class lower than the Reagan era, really are a key driver of housing price inflation.

Investment firms, certainly, are a red herring: https://www.vox.com/22524829/wall-street-housing-market-blac... (“However, the idea that institutional investors are somehow largely to blame for the current housing market catastrophe is wrong and obscures the real problem. Housing prices have been skyrocketing due to historically low supply, low mortgage rates, and the largest generation in American history entering the market looking for starter homes.”).

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